The literature mentions various experiments conducted with a view to formulating onboard equipment facilitating the piloting of an aircraft while rolling on the surface of an airport especially in the case of poor visibility. The article by Sharon Otero Beskenis et al, entitled “Integrated Display System For Low Visibility Landing and Surface Operations” published in July 1998 under the reference NASA/CR-1998-208446 describes an experiment with an aeroplane of the Boeing B-757 type equipped with a head-level screen HDD (the acronym standing for the expression: “Head-down display”) displaying a pop-up map of the airport pinpointing the aircraft on the trafficways of the airport by utilizing a geographical location delivered by a satellite differential positioning system and an electronic map of the airport, depicting the rolling path assigned to the aircraft by the airport traffic authorities, the reporting points delimiting the rolling authorizations as well as reporting points transmitted by a runway anti-intrusion ground-based system dubbed AMASS (the acronym standing for the expression: “Airport Movement Area Safety System”).
These conclusive experiments have not had any immediate follow-up because of the high level of equipment required for the airport ground installations. Simpler systems offering a less complete service but not demanding any particular equipment for the airport have since been proposed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,606,563 describes an alert system plotting, by GPS positioning, the position of an aircraft on the surface of an airport modelled in an electronic memory and signalling to the pilot that he is approaching or penetrating onto a runway.
French patent application FR2891645 describes a method and device for evaluating the significance of a risk of violation of a traffic flow constraint for a craft provided with geographical location equipment and deploying on the surface of an airport comprising zones with traffic flow constraint. The evaluation of the intrusion significance risk is based on the inter-correlation of a first zone related to a craft and of a second zone related to congestion or constraint zones of an airport, these zones corresponding to constructions such as air terminals, hangars and also routing zones for which the aircraft has not received access authorization.
Neither of these two systems makes it possible to take into account the risks of collisions in relation to craft in the close environment of an aircraft. It is easier to monitor congestion zones, of the construction, taxiway, air terminal type, on an airport surface since these zones do not change or do so very rarely, and are known by means of databases updated regularly by the control authorities.